Snatching It Back: The Best Of Clarence Carter CD

In his perceptive liner notes to this excellent greatest-hits album, Dave Marsh makes the point that Clarence Carter, alone amongst the great Southern soul singers of the '60s, was the final link in a long chain of blind blues singer-guitarists stretching back to Blind Willie McTell. You can hear the justification for Marsh's observation several times here, particularly on a straight blues like "The Road of Love" (yes, that's Duane Allman's distinctive slide guitar ping-ponging from speaker to speaker) or the overtly jokey "Back Door Santa."

Carter is just as persuasive in the Memphis soul style, as exemplified by his glorious cheating anthem "Slip Away" and a cover of the Box Tops "Soul Deep." The album's most astonishing moment, however, is the four-minute rap about human sexuality that prefaces Carter's version of James Carr's "(Making Love) on the Dark End of the Street." The mixture of salacious absurdity and unbridled fervor results in performance art of the highest caliber.

Live Recording

Includes liner notes by Dave Marsh.

Personnel: Clarence Carter (vocals, guitar); James Johnson, Albert Lowe, Duane Allman, Travis Wammack (guitar); Gene Miller, Wayne Jackson, Harrison Calloway Jr., Jack Peck (trumpet); Aaron Varnell (tenor & baritone saxophone); Charles Chalmers, Andrew Love, Joe Arnold, Harvey Thompson (tenor saxophone); Floyd Newman, James Mitchell, Ronnie Eades (baritone saxophone); Clayton Ivey (piano, organ, keyboards); Barry Beckett (piano, organ); Linden Oldham (piano); Marvell Thomas (organ); David Hood, Jesse Boyce, Bob Wray, Jerry Masters (bass); Roger Hawkins, Freeman Brown, Fred Pouty, Cornell McFadden (drums); Donna Rhodes, Charles Chalmers, Sandy Rhodes (background vocals).

Entertainment Weekly (6/19/92, p.72) - "..a monumental document of how powerfully sinful music could grow from righteous gospel roots.." - Rating: B+